Purple Reign

Playing a match of PvP today will likely mean facing at least one Purple Fighter. Lately, the color has seen an influx of meta defining Fighters. SP Android #17 PUR, SP Super Vegito PUR, SP SSB Vegeta PUR, and SP Teen Trunks PUR have each defined the categories they were placed in. What's more, even Fighters in a tier below them are still powerhouses in the right hands. They would be great....but the rest of the recent Purple additions just seem to be on another level.

Running a Purple Color Counter team right now is a viable strategy in PvP. Green Fighters, as a result, suffered tremendously. The result is that Fighters that would otherwise be above average, or even great, are scored lower due to the power and prevalence of Purple in the current Meta. For instance, how often can SP Buuhan GRN really be a threat if any of the top tier Purple Fighters can combo him in one hand (or in some instances, one card)?

The result is that Blue Fighters are often safer in the current Meta than they would otherwise be. With Green being such a vulnerable color to run, Blue can often hide behind just one of the top tier Purple Fighters. This is part of why SP Gogeta BLU is such a monster on a Fusion Team. Essentially, taking a color counter to stop him means opening the team up to an immense color disadvantage. Fighting top tier Purple Fighters is hard enough without having Attribute Downgrades into the mix.

The logical counter to the Purple wave in PVP is to take strong Yellow Fighters. This has elevated Fighters in Yellow that may otherwise not be placed onto a team, but now are purely as Purple assassins. SP Perfect Cell YEL, SP FF Frieza YEL, SP SSJ Future Gohan YEL, and SP SSJ3 Gotenks YEL all have great kits and options both to fight Purple opponents and provide good team support. In essence, they already had decent utility, but now have the additional perk of color on Purple.

The real hero of the Purple wave is the reliance on Red Fighters. As stated above, the Yellow Fighter’s role as Purple assassins is now a must on any PVP team. This means that any team running a top tier Purple Fighter should be taking a strong Red Fighter to color counter. For Fusion Teams, this is easy. SP Vegito RED not only defines the Fusion Tag, he can also prevent switching and crush your opponent’s Yellow Fighters.

Sagas Warriors Teams get access to SP Broly: Fury RED, a formidable Fighter with great Z abilities. SP SSJ Vegeta RED, thanks to his recent buffs, can also absolutely annihilate Yellow Fighters, and fits perfectly into Vegeta Family teams alongside his son, SP Teen Trunks PUR. SP SSJ2 Gohan RED now synergizes on a Hybrid Team with SP Teen Trunks PUR for some of the highest damage a Hybrid Team can achieve.

Right now the three strongest Elements in the Meta are Purple, Red, and Blue. Yellow doesn’t make the cut due to losing advantage against Red, which is going to be run with any Purple Fighter dependent team. It also doesn’t beat Blue thanks to an essentially Green-free -- or at least easily Green counterable --meta.

This puts Legends in an interesting position. Green absolutely needs to be saved at this point, but how to do that is somewhat complicated. Any added Green Fighters in the future are immediately going to be judged by the fact that Purple is everywhere. Likely, the answer is first to release Yellow Fighters that have the ability to remove color disadvantage.

At a minimum, this would create a safety buffer for Yellow Fighters to take back control from Purple and the latter’s Red partners.Between strong Yellow answers to Purple and natural power creep, it will likely be some time before Green sees the light of day as a reliable powerhouse again. In the meantime, here are some top Teams that take full advantage of this ‘Purple Reign’.